Spanish prosecutor Jose Grinda has noted that the activities of Russian criminal networks are virtually indistinguishable from those of the government.
"It's not so much a mafia state as a nationalized mafia," Russian organized crime expert Mark Galeotti, a professor at New York University and co-host of the Power Vertical Podcast, said in a recent lecture at the Hudson Institute. https://www.rferl.org/a/putins-mafia-statecraft/27329898.html
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3 million in Russia's organized crime networks, said 1994 UN report; two-thirds of Russian economy under sway of organized crime, according to estimates. -CSIS report on Russian Organized Crime, 1997, p. 25; see http://www.russianlaw.org/roc_csis.pdf
Russian Organized Crime (OC) is also known or is reported to be involved in criminal activity with other major international OC groups, including US Mafia, the Sicilian Mafia, the 'Ndrangheta, the Camorra, the Boryokudan (Japanese Yakuza), Chinese Triads, Korean criminal groups, Turkish drug traffickers, and Colombian drug cartels and other South American drug organizations. [37] These groups have cooperated with their Russian counterparts in international narcotics trafficking, money laundering, and counterfeiting. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/hockey/mafia/csis.html
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1-20-2011 “Central America is entering an extraordinarily critical phase” in which its peace and security are threatened by “the onslaught of the drug-trafficking organisations”, an official from the International Narcotics Control Board, a United Nations agency, warned this month.
Much of the blame lies with the arrival of the Mexican mafias, mainly the Zetas and the Sinaloa “cartel”.
http://www.economist.com/node/17963313
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4-18-2017 In the 1990s, Russian-based organized crime groups (RBOC) came to Europe as would-be conquerors. For a time, it looked as if they were unstoppable. Prague became home to representatives of all the main RBOC networks, such as Solntsevo, Tambovskaya, and the Chechens, as well as mobster banker Semen Mogilevich. Russian and Chechen gangs fought each other for supremacy over the Baltic underworld. During the ‘bloody autumn’ of 1994, Estonia alone saw about 100 murders connected with the struggle for dominance. From the nightclubs of Budapest to the finance houses of London, apocryphal tales and official reports alike began to warn of a coming age of Russian gangster dominance. RBOC even emerged in France, Germany, and beyond. But it wasn’t to last. The explosion of apparent RBOC activity owed more to a combination of surprise, media hype, and desperation within RBOC groups to internationalise, than anything else. The process of expansion was ultimately unsustainable. Many groups were eliminated or forced back to Russia, Ukraine, and other eastern states by indigenous gangs and law-enforcement agencies who mobilised against the new threat, sometimes in cahoots with each other.
So when RBOC returned in the 2000s and 2010s it was largely in the shadows, as brokers and facilitators. http://www.ecfr.eu/publications/summary/crimintern_how_the_kremlin_uses_russias_criminal_networks_in_europe
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May 03, 2016 Putin and the Russian Mafia
As deputy mayor of St. Petersburg in the 1990s, Vladimir Putin spent a lot of time with gangsters.
He collaborated with the infamous Tambov and Malyshev organized crime groups to gain control of St. Petersburg's gambling industry.
He used his office to help launder mafia money and to arrange foreign travel for known mobsters.
And security for the Ozero dacha cooperative he co-founded with some of his former KGB pals was provided by a company run by the Tambov gang, whom Putin also helped secure a monopoly over the city's fuel distribution network.
Putin was, in fact, an important liaison between the local government and the criminal underworld, Karen Dawisha writes in her highly acclaimed book Putin's Kleptocracy.
And when he moved into the Kremlin, Putin put his old mafia contacts to use as key tools of Russian statecraft.
"A significant part of Russian organised crime is organised directly from the offices of the Kremlin," the International Business Times quoted Ben Emmerson, a prominent British attorney who represents the family of slain Russian defector Aleksandr Litvinenko, as saying.
Likewise, Russian organized crime expert Mark Galeotti noted in a recent lecture at the Hudson Institute that Putin's Russia is "not so much a mafia state as a state with a nationalized mafia."
Putin's Kremlin has used organized crime to carry out the tasks it wants to keep its fingerprints off, be it arms smuggling, assassinations, raising funds for black ops, or stirring up trouble in the former Soviet space.
Moscow relied heavily on local organized crime structures in its support for separatist movements in Transdniester, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Crimea, and the Donbas.
In the conflict in eastern Ukraine, organized crime groups served as agents for the Kremlin, fomenting pro-Russia unrest and funneling arms to rebel groups.
Putin's weaponization of the mafia stems from his political education in the gangsters' paradise that was St. Petersburg.
"In genealogical terms, Putin is the product of the KGB. But in sociological terms, he is the product of the new class that emerged in the Darwinian conditions of the 1990s: business-minded, ambitious, nationalistic, and coldly utilitarian about norms and rules," veteran Russia-watcher James Sherr of Chatham House wrote in a recent report.
But now, thanks to Spanish Judge Jose de la Mata, the mask is coming off Putin's mafia statecraft in a big way.
Judge de la Mata has issued international arrest warrants for a dozen reputed Russian gangsters from the Tambov and Malyshev gangs, including current and former Russian government officials.
On the wanted list are Interior Ministry official Nikolai Aulov, Vladislav Reznik, a member of the ruling United Russia party who is deputy head of the State Duma's Finance Committee, and former Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sobolevsky.
Other officials linked to the gangs, but not subject to warrants, include two longtime Putin confidants: former Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov and current Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak.
Also named are former Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov and former Information Technology Minister Leonid Reiman.
The charges -- which include complicity in assassinations, weapons trafficking, extortion, fraud, forgery, bribery, drug smuggling, and money laundering -- are based on a decade-long investigation and stem from a 488-page complaint filed by Spanish prosecutors Juan Carrau and Jose Grinda in May 2015.
In 2010, Grinda briefed U.S. officials in Madrid about the investigation, informing them that the Kremlin used "organised crime groups to do whatever the government of Russia cannot acceptably do as a government." http://www.israelmilitary.net/showthread.php?t=31167
As deputy mayor of St. Petersburg in the 1990s, Vladimir Putin spent a lot of time with gangsters.
He collaborated with the infamous Tambov and Malyshev organized crime groups to gain control of St. Petersburg's gambling industry.
He used his office to help launder mafia money and to arrange foreign travel for known mobsters.
And security for the Ozero dacha cooperative he co-founded with some of his former KGB pals was provided by a company run by the Tambov gang, whom Putin also helped secure a monopoly over the city's fuel distribution network.
Putin was, in fact, an important liaison between the local government and the criminal underworld, Karen Dawisha writes in her highly acclaimed book Putin's Kleptocracy.
And when he moved into the Kremlin, Putin put his old mafia contacts to use as key tools of Russian statecraft.
"A significant part of Russian organised crime is organised directly from the offices of the Kremlin," the International Business Times quoted Ben Emmerson, a prominent British attorney who represents the family of slain Russian defector Aleksandr Litvinenko, as saying.
Likewise, Russian organized crime expert Mark Galeotti noted in a recent lecture at the Hudson Institute that Putin's Russia is "not so much a mafia state as a state with a nationalized mafia."
Putin's Kremlin has used organized crime to carry out the tasks it wants to keep its fingerprints off, be it arms smuggling, assassinations, raising funds for black ops, or stirring up trouble in the former Soviet space.
Moscow relied heavily on local organized crime structures in its support for separatist movements in Transdniester, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Crimea, and the Donbas.
In the conflict in eastern Ukraine, organized crime groups served as agents for the Kremlin, fomenting pro-Russia unrest and funneling arms to rebel groups.
Putin's weaponization of the mafia stems from his political education in the gangsters' paradise that was St. Petersburg.
"In genealogical terms, Putin is the product of the KGB. But in sociological terms, he is the product of the new class that emerged in the Darwinian conditions of the 1990s: business-minded, ambitious, nationalistic, and coldly utilitarian about norms and rules," veteran Russia-watcher James Sherr of Chatham House wrote in a recent report.
But now, thanks to Spanish Judge Jose de la Mata, the mask is coming off Putin's mafia statecraft in a big way.
Judge de la Mata has issued international arrest warrants for a dozen reputed Russian gangsters from the Tambov and Malyshev gangs, including current and former Russian government officials.
On the wanted list are Interior Ministry official Nikolai Aulov, Vladislav Reznik, a member of the ruling United Russia party who is deputy head of the State Duma's Finance Committee, and former Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sobolevsky.
Other officials linked to the gangs, but not subject to warrants, include two longtime Putin confidants: former Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov and current Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak.
Also named are former Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov and former Information Technology Minister Leonid Reiman.
The charges -- which include complicity in assassinations, weapons trafficking, extortion, fraud, forgery, bribery, drug smuggling, and money laundering -- are based on a decade-long investigation and stem from a 488-page complaint filed by Spanish prosecutors Juan Carrau and Jose Grinda in May 2015.
In 2010, Grinda briefed U.S. officials in Madrid about the investigation, informing them that the Kremlin used "organised crime groups to do whatever the government of Russia cannot acceptably do as a government." http://www.israelmilitary.net/showthread.php?t=31167
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